machinehead

Although phonegnome is supposed to be the next big thing, I think the Sipura SPA-3000 device is still very good value for money. ( data sheet ) Its a relatively reasonably priced FXO, FXS interface. I've purchased a couple from jmg technology in australia which had some package deal for 2. The pain with these things http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif is that it doesn't really come easy at this stage unlike broadband internet routers. Looking at the configuration pages were a real pain and it is really difficult to understand every option. The solution was voxilla. http://voxilla.com. After you create an account in voxilla and log in. under the sidebar voIP tools, device config wizards you will find a link that will ask simliar questions to let you configure your device. The simplied setup guide for australia can be . The support website is http://www.sipura.com/support/ Just to get started - plug in everything except the phone line cable - dial **** followed by 110# to g...

Playing Quake II basically thought me that life was short and its not nice to camp with a rail gun at a spawning point. I read today that the average life span of a non protected windows machine on the internet is 20 mins. I'm assuming this is with all the normal activity that most people do like surfing and checking their email. This means that the first websites we should visit and the application to install after connecting up our new machine is the windows patch page and an anti-virus protection program. I thought this might be an interesting fact to know. And of course the average lifespan of a space marine dropped into battle is ?

Tis the season to be jolly. Christmas is upon us and I've found it excessively hard to spend time to type a new article or do any music production. I imagine it would be a great time to reflect on our achievements and areas of improvement for the next year and spend some time writing some resolutions. Merry Christmas everyone.

The problem I've been having with MIDI on my winXP machine is that I've been unable to do any MIDI routing without launching my sequencer. MacOS X has an inbuilt and intuitive function in the system preferences to manage this, however this function is lacking in windows. Some midi interfaces provide its native routing program, e.g. emagic, but my tascam us-428 just didn't have that. The solution, MIDI OX and MIDI Yoke . They have been around for a while, but its something i just discovered that does something similar. You will need to add all your MIDI devices and connect them up. Its not as pretty as the MIDI controls in MacOS X, but it works.

I believe a person's personal computer tells a lot about the person. Before that, people could only read faces, palms, handwriting. Now we know more about people by seeing what brand, operating system, choice of programs, wallpaper and desktop layout. The last few of generations of machines has just swooped by us and a lot of people would have seen at least 3 - 5 computers pass them by. Naturally, it will soon be time to be looking at a new upgrade. So what would be this character defining machine be. The more significant machines of this decade is my Fostex 4-track, Korg N5, Pentium 2-333, Pentium 3-667. G4 977 ibook. I have to say you really get great ROI on good machines. In fact, my old pentium machines are still serving faithfully to this day. The trick to actually determining ROI should be best determined by the amount of time you spend at your machine, or at least the amount of time you want to spend at your machine. i.e. your best ROI will be your wife's nightmare. Th...

Fav tracks These aren't from 2005 but I would just claim them to be my fav tracks this year. To qualify I would have listened to each track like numerous times and occasionally several times at once. A couple these tracks are fun to drum since I got my kit this year. A couple I played guitar with the band. Others are just exceptionally touching. K's Choice - Iron Flower Radiohead - Exit Music (For A Film) Beatles - Come together Bach - Concerto in D minor, BWV 1043 - I. Vivace Chemical Brothers - The Test Crystal Method - Weapons of mass distortion Depeche Mode - World in my eyes Grinspoon - Kills, Thrills, And Sunday Pills Jebediah - Animal The Vines - Ride Collective soul - Listen Stone Roses - Love Spreads Getz/Gilberto - girl from ipanema Air - dirty trip New order - brutal Sergio Mendes & Brazil 66 - Más Que Nada Propellerheads - On Her Majesty's Secret Service Placebo - bulletproof cupid Other awards Best Band - K's choice (thanks to many train rides and 1 MD)...

Skype is going video while Gizmo is SIP. In all fairness, I think people should give gizmo a go. I like the idea that its interoperable with other SIP networks while maintaining the ease of Skype. Unfortunately, its not getting as much glory for being bought at a huge price, but I'm sure gizmo is a contender for the next big thing. I've got my gizmo ID, get yours!

Last night I dreamt I was back in my old room and there was a blackout. My UPS was buzzing and I had to rush to shutdown all my machines with only 1 KVM. Soon after I hit control alt delete to save time, the wall I was facing was sucked away leaving a funny material wall with a small beige cusioned tunnel. the flat cusions was stuck to the walls of the tunnel with velcro. I climbed into the tunnel and finally reached a white corridor and discovered little blue aliens. The aliens revealed that they designed apple computers when I noted that the ship internals look familier. As I walked along the corridors, I noticed a small chill out loungy looking bathing pool with bubbles populated with some guy and more aliens. I also met some immortals from "The Highlander" one played by Sean Connery. Soon it was time to leave and I was hoping for a free mac. Unfortunately they didn't keep any stock but were kind enough to loan me one of the early concept design macs which actually lo...

Sure, we know all about voIP. We read the news and about how telecommunications is going to change. Apart from some phone card services and the alternate IDD line that use internet gateways, how else has voIP changed our lives. About one year ago, I was trying to get my friends and family to install skype. Some finally did and still run it faithfully while others still plainly refuse. Now, I'm trying to get these people not to use skype but use a SIP capable internet phone instead. I was never quite happy with the limitation of skype not being transferable between other voIP services, but the plain simplicity of the installation and use was great for the people you had to talk to on the other end. The process of making the switch will probably be gradual, but how do I make sure everyone is on the same system for interoperability? My solution would be to pick the protocol and not the application and SIP naturally comes to mine. Although SIP has been out for a while now, I still thin...

Q: Is there a monitoring and reporting tool package that can do "everything"? A: Depending on the application. Well, speaking on past experience, I haven't seen a tool that has just out of the box done all the monitoring and reporting you will ever need. Uptime, performance or disk space alerts probably, but once you get down to the application you need to support, you're on your own and will need to build your own interface to the package or alert system. Q: What about mature software packages by big vendors that have complicated specifications and requirements. A: Some of these are great tools that work in specialised enviornments. Each tool will work on a case by case basis. Policy is currently an organisations best friend in controlling this enviornment. It can dictate what computer hardware and software are used. However in real life, its very difficult to maintain a certain standard as everyone works differently and you will obviously get the renegade department...

One of the more fun things about thursdays other than band practises is the computer gym. Its like a truck with computers for kids. I think its a great idea but i'm not exactly sure if the kids feel the same way. Still its good to get a bit of screen time and a lot more time outside.

Last year someone from the office bought me MS-DOS 5 still in the original packing as a practical joke during the secret santa gift exchange. I've been keeping it on my shelf for almost a year and its about secret santa time again. As I am not that evil, I decided to dump it this year. Before it goes to the bin, I thought i might as well image the disks in case the planet blew up. I opened the shrink wrapped box and found 5 floppy disks and I dont mean 3.5inch disks. Good grief. To give an idea on my view about floppies, 2 out of 3 of my current machines doesn't even have 3.5 inch floppy drives and the one that does is a linux box, which is there for historical reasons. Although I think I might at some point use to backup essential configuration files, but meanwhile with external drives, why bother? Anyway, as you can see I used a scanner to copy the disk in the end. Here's to backups!

Yikes! Just got a Panasonic X700 and tried to set it up on my ibook still running Mac OS X 10.3. with isync 1.5 One of the first hurdles was the fact that the Panasonic x700 is not listed as a supportable device in Panther. This was easily overcome by a published hack The only thing to note when making changes to the file example is to use correct the device address. You can also change the phone name as well. I changed mine to the same name as what I named and paired the mobile as. If you do not know the name or device address, goto: System Preferences > Bluetooth > Devices Next was the really curious bit. I attempted to add my 6600 back as another sync device and it started complaining. So it seems that 1.5 can only manage one symbian phone sync at a time. The solution, remove and add. The painful part in that is the x700 is not supported. Unix script to the rescue. Create 2 files, one for each phone, e.g. SymbianConduitDefaults.plist_x700 SymbianConduitDefaults.plist_6600 Scri...

I've recently discovered the next blog button (top right) and I have to say there are tons of interesting blogs out there. I've found more mac users and other forms of media. Theses are the interesting ones I've found which use video and audio on their blog. vidsofwati - video on blogger AuralFixation - audio on blogger The amazing thing is you dont need to be a genius to do this, but there is a catch. you need web space somewhere else. Webspace in a uni or a .Mac account. I've not tried using the picture attach button to attach an mov file, which I might try in a while. Not hopeful. Upload, link and "tada" a more intersting blog experience. Oh yeah, check out the a free mp3 from boards of canada! I didn't realise that download.com did audio downloads as well. --- Date: 25th Dec 2005 Looks like there's this website that does videos as well and its like full lenght music videos that you can link to your blog. check out http://www.youtube.com

Since the discovery of blogs and wikis, I have never found that much fun in documentation. There is a certain element of funlyness, if there is such a word, that makes you feel all soft inside. Ooooo. I'm sure everyone struggled to try to put their homepages online. I remembered when I first had to put melven.com up. Only managed to fix it today, although I've been wanting to do something with it for ages but never got about to it. This is the first brilliant example of how blogs make documentation easy. It's so much easier for me to just focus on the content on message instead of worrying about how to structure the page into the rest of the site. The days of large number of webmasters are numbered. Blogs naturally being great for journals and historical references. Once we get into the area of categorisation and versioning, I would highly suggest using a wiki. There are quite a few wikis out there to join in. Its a great opportunity to put your valued knowledge and learn ...

Before this blog gets insanely boring, I ought to put a picture of a cute dog to maintain interest. Good grief, the things people have to do to captivate audiences these days. This is toto. His last name is not annihilation, but I thought that was a very funny line from "cats and dogs" and decided to use it for a title. I previously tried to name a guide dog we sponsored toto, which didn't happen. Somehow my neice managed to think this one up on her own.

It was one of the longest queues I've ever seen in Brisbane waiting for a shop to open. The one day only sale at Billy Hyde Music. They sent me the brochure that promised $5 condenser microphones, which I did not see. and did not really have a chance to ask for because it was just a mad house. They did seem pretty professional with piped music, live act and annoucements for the people queing outside. I have to say the first half hour was torturous. But I'm sure if there was a similar sale in Singapore, it would be equivelent to the esprit or zara sale. Items itself were cheaper and relatively good prices, but since there were so many people about, further bargaining wasn't very likely. This would have been of greater value if people already know what they want and have previously negotiated good prices and walk in to see if they can get a better deal. One more point on tackling the sale, allow yourself a lot of time. As I had only 30 mins before leaving for my tire servicin...

Question: What do get when you cross Apple with IBM? Answer: IBM Here's another variant Question: What do get when you cross Oracle with Peoplesoft? Answer: Oracle I'm sure these jokes were made by an american, never can really understand their humour.

I spoke too soon, just as I was commenting on how stable Windows XP was in Apple is Evil , Windows XP decided to go blue screen on me. At the time of failure, the guys in the studio just stared at the screen and said that was interesting. They had XP crash on them all the time, but haven't seen the blue screen in a while. Can't say that was consoling. The reason of the crash was windows fighting over the audio driver for my tascam 428. The moral of the story is, do not attempt to start Acid when using Cubase. Only one main application should be run at any one time. One more year to getting powermac. Gonna start counting down the months. "12 .."

I was about to type a comment on a friend's blog but as this response would be too long, I decided to put a post on my own. Refer to Data Inheritance . To try to make this point easier, pick a school of thought. Optimist : Of course data will be stored forever and easily assessible via web interfaces on your refrigerator Pessimist : Data is will be lost before you die due to some stupid virus or a hardisk failure. And you curse and swear Tecnologist : Adequate information lifecycle management strategies can be implemented using archival, backup and content management tools. The Optimist Harddisks are getting bigger and cheaper right? When you upgrade machines, just copy stuff from one to the next leaving lots of spare. you might end up with a horrid number of old harddisks like myself that will confuse the wife, but its just the part of parcel of upgrades. You can also utilise a host of external storage media, external enclosures and network attached storage and varied distributed ...

The worse of wars come from the best of intentions. As much as I am an Apple fan, I occasionally get the sinking feeling that my passion in the future will be naught. We all have heard that "windows is evil" more often than any other operating systems. Occasionally we feel that way, which our machines crashing, our data corrupted, virus attacks, etc. Giving it some credit, I am impressed with XP and my consistent uptime. In fact it now "has been up for: 14 day(s), 8 hour(s), 11 minute(s), 49 second(s)" We all know mac's are great. Great for uptime, great for idiots, great on a total cost of ownership in any organisation, although not widely accepted. After reading Winn's Mac/Wintel TCO analysis, mac wins on the virus, spyware patching stuff. But why run analyse TCO of just that? How about Fedora vs Wintel? If there is any basis of comparision in an organisation, it would solely be the compatibility factor of groupware applications like outlook and office. Th...

In Fedora Core 3, the default encoder is oggenc which encodes to ogg format and not to the more popular mp3. The default setup also does not put the track number in front. This can be configured as followed. 1) Download and install lame-3.96.1-2.1.fc3.rf.i386.rpm from Dag. This is not included in the fedora installation even the full install of 4 disks! http://dag.wieers.com/packages/lame/lame-3.96.1-2.1.fc3.rf.i386.rpm 2) Change the Encoder Settings - Config > Encode > Encoder Encoder: lame Encoder command-line: -h -b %b %w %m Encode file extension: mp3 Encode file format ~/mp3/%A/%d/%t_%n.mp3 I pretty much just left the encoder command line as default, but changed the bitrate in the Options tab to 192 3) For consistency, I changed the ripper options in Config > Rip > Ripper Rip file format ~/mp3/%A/%d/%t_%n.wav 4) yibidi, yibidi - thats all folks.

I used to think it was a joke until today. I received a nice courier package containing a new 128MB 133mhz RAM I must have got ages ago. Through my years of buying memory and harddrives, I've always been quite amused by the fact that kingston had some lifetime warranty label. I never thought too much about it until I realised I had a spare (and compatible with my current machines) simm that wasn't in a computer. How horrid is that? So I opened up my Pentium 3 667 and stuck it in and it didn't work. Not having Sim Lim Square around the corner, I decided to look on the kingston site. After a few links, I think I managed to send an electronic form to the australian distributor stating my problem. They quickly responded with an RMA. In response, I mailed the memory back in an envelop to NSW for bit more than 5 bucks and thought thats the last I'd see of it. As I was walking past my pigeon hole, I noticed a note saying package in the bigger pigeon hole below and it was a cou...

Although Not the best concert I've ever been too, but i have to say it was pretty top notch. I dont attibute it to the artists, but the location. Queensland is still rather lacking in the areas of refined arts. The orchestra wasn't entirely inspiring during the first half, but quickly brushed up on the second half with more vivace. Its amazing to be able to hear the popular voice of the tenor in real life, not to mention catch one of the guest stars on the original muppet show. This is suppose to be his farewell tour, so we wish him all the best.

Its been a while since I've setup my ibook to use the GPRS connection. It has come in really handy before in the sunshine coast hinterland town of malany where there weren't any telephones in the luxury chalets and to get to the nearest phone line, would mean a trek to the hut at the entrance where one phone might be available. I believe anyone who owns a mobile and bluetooth capable notebook should at least set up their GPRS to the notebook. Its good to know that in cases of emergency, when there isn't any power and the lines are cut, you can at least check your mail or surf the net at slow speeds. In my case, one of things I must have is SSH. SSH actually works fine on GPRS. Its a bit laggy, but usable. This means youre never too far from your server. Each GPRS connection for mobile providers are different. The differences are in the APN. I've included some in this post. There are 3 steps to this process: Step 1: Add/Pair your mobile as a device your computer can reco...

I fixed up my DNS server last week. Its really strange how organisations can still rely on hosts file for name resolution. What was even more amazing was that I just accepted that for almost 2 years. When the network change and you realise that its a real pain to make changes and you start wondering who's bright idea it was to use the hosts file in the first place and of course its always easier to for people to blame the guy who's not there. So whats the big deal with running a DNS server anyway? Its not a big overhead to create a functional a workgroup DNS server, unless of course, its some windows thing that need to log into some domain that requires some auto population something that caches some hosts to some server that needs to be assessible via some funny port across the intranet, etc? No doubt windows can also do a simplified version, but in a typical organisation setup, policies determine logic. Mind you that common sense normally means that logic should dictate polic...

Ju at work All work and no play makes Ju a dull boy

Basically since Akai stopped making the s2000, for the longest time I couldn't figure how to use mesa II with anything other than windows 89. Its now possible to use mesa with windows XP. Download Mesa 2 Apparently you just need to update the adaptec ASPI driver. (so I've read) Download the ASPI driver from Adaptec Or you can look in download.com to find Adaptec ASPI Drivers (Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP) 4.71.2 Now all I need to do is look for my scsi card and find another PCI slot in my machine. I think I've only one left and thats reserved for a video editing card.

The world of USB is rather amazing. Practically every other device comes with a USB interface. In fact to cope with this Distributing your Bus Most magazines will mention to utilise the different buses as much as possible, which is part of my current quests. However the last article I read in Mac Addict didn't mention anything about controlling the number of USB devices to each USB bus. Well, I haven't actually ran into any USB problems with my ibook, but i've actually at one stage ran out of USB resouces on my AMD desktop. The logitech webcam was actually the killer which now resides on my ibook instead. As a matter of fact, you can actually take a look at how much juice each usb device is taking up so that you dont kill each USB host controller. In windows XP (I use the classic layout), Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > Universal Serial Bus Controllers. Look for the entry that ends with controller. Click on the "Advanced" tab and i...

My feeble attempt and merging 2 photos. Partly due to camera autosensing the colour and auto changing it, I would need to find out how to put that in manual, not to mention use a tripod stand. This was quite an interesting site. Dormant volcano crater which collected rain water and is now a swamp. No crocs here.

In my earlier post about Mac OS X, I was going to suss out gentoo for . What I have discovered that, gentoo still does not have as many applications as compared to fink at this point. The list of avaliable packages are listed in this webpage. http://packages.gentoo.org/archs/ppc-macos/stable/ If you plan on using more applications, I would probably suggest using fink instead. Via the command line, installing applications is just as easy. "# fink install package" If you have already installed X11 for darwin, you might realise that the fink X applications may not like it very much, I'm guessing the X11 for darwin is not a full featured X server. To get past this, I just moved the darwin X11 files so that I wouldn't lose them in case I happen to need them again. # mv /etc/X11 /etc/X11_old # mv /usr/X11R6 /usr/X11R6_old

Back from a holiday at Cairns. Yes, it was great, but seriously going back to my natural habitat after being out in the bush for a couple of hours can be a rather harrowing experience. People fear change, but they embrace holidays. Most find it a way of escaping the "real" world. They joke about how they like to maintain a permanent holiday, but I doubt they seriously mean it though. Some might survive a couple of years the most, but at some point of time, they will probably want to start doing something more along the lines of what they left behind. So if you ask me whats the best thing about holidays other than the experiences? Its the fact that you know it is going to end and thats what makes it a plesant experience. Simply because you know it can't last forever. Of course there are different aspects to how true this statement is. You can join a tour from hell and each minute can be excruciating pain. I can vaguely remember a tour I've almost sucessfully blocked fr...

Its instinct how we try to change people. "I love you for who you are, now change". I've been relatively happy with windows since I've discovered cygwin. What that does is that it puts a linux bash and other commands into windows cmd. This means that I dont feel lost once i run cmd. How often have you typed "ls -l" in a dos prompt? The great thing now is that i can do crazy things like "dir | grep file". Thats one reason why I like Mac OS X. You wouldn't feel lost, or should I say that lost. Its not exactly like the user friendly Linux enviornment that allows you to do tons of stuff in many different ways. And it doesn't have that many open source applications and not known to be as friendly to them as well. There has been a few projects to port linux apps to mac os. I've been trying some since, fink included. As that was a long time ago, I can't quite remember the reason why I needed it, but I have a feeling it had something to d...

Just on the topic of standards, I need to mention one asI think it's amazing, as it is able to summarise and effectively deal with the problems of most organisations. I've heard people say that "Our problems are different. We are in a very challenging situation at the moment. This is a very tough implementation." Believe it or not, there is an idiots guide out of any situation. Check out these links to find out more. Everything is defined and desired outcomes very beautifully illustrated. The concepts are easy and you do not need to rely too much the experts ;) http://www.itsmf.com/index.asp http://www.itilcommunity.com/index.php I think this to be an example of developing a culture of technology and not culture vs. technology. Long live the Queen?

I love standards and I think everyone should too! Coming from a generation of the marketing era where everyone is differentiating and niche marketing, there just isn't the common ground for people to communicate with each other. In fact, there is an additional layer of intepretation that needs to be developed just to overcome this concept of being special. Firewire, I-Link or IEEE 1394 for the other losers who couldn't patent a name for themselves, we all know are the same thing now, but think about all the marketing dollars that went into us making us realise that it is the same thing after all. Think about how many times the guy at the shop has to repeat himself about this. Can that have been prevented? The answer is "Yes, but why should I?". The ones who patent the name have a "differentiated" product when though it is the exact same thing as the next. The next question, should big organisations, like microsoft for example, play well with others? Why, of ...

The problem with wishlists is that they constantly change due to need. Hence the problem of saving for wish lists become even more of an issue. In the last 15 or so years in my life, I've kept a wish list of items and some of these items are still there since then, but happy to say that the bulk of the items are now gone. The days where the bulk of the list was amps, guitars and stompboxes are no longer here and the equipment have also all gone. The one item that eludes me in a good synth. Although I had my Korg N5 for the last 6 years and has fuelled great sweeps and pads, not having multiple effects channels for midi channels really kicks the butt when you programing in multi mode. Right now, I'm having to record each track to wave so I get each channel with the associated midi effect. I've outgrown my 15 year old fostex 4-track and currently using it as a mixer. It would have been crazy to keep boucing tracks. My lucky sequencer now is Cubase LE. Although I bought Cubase...

Generally I can understand why in most deliberations, the common outcome is how futile life is, as illustrated in the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. It really doesn't matter how much you do or how exciting most adventures are when youre always in the middle of it and don't see the big picture. Pretty much like the bug in the rug concept. Would you suddenly take pride in being a hyper intelligent robot when you've always been a hyper intelligent robot? Apparently not. Maybe someone who isn't a hyper intelligent robot would say, "Gee, wouldn't it be great if i was a hyper intelligent robot?" If there isn't already this version of the meaning of existence, I think it can be added to the list. "I do not know, therefore I am". Ignorance, the driving force of civilisation. The ones that admit it, learn and evolve, the other than don't live in relative bliss and die anyway.

I didn't know those green bushes would have white flowers before they popped up.

This friend made me start a blog. I created an account so I can post comments on his blog and meanwhile decided to put some thoughts down. http://futilityoflife.blogspot.com Oddly enough I realised that another friend started his blog as well on saturday. http://fruitllama.blogspot.com I mean I know blogging was popular but this is getting a bit nuts.

Is virtualisation the next wave of true computing or just the recent hype that technologist are throwing at system buyers? Why are we all jumping to believe that its the way things should be implemented now? Back to the earlier post, less than 2 years ago, open source and linux wasn't a viable option and now it is. Virtulisation isn't mature technology, if youre talking about pseudo virtualisation, then maybe, but definately not on the enterprise level. So what makes virtualisation more popular than open source, or have we learnt from our mistakes and suddenly willing to take any risks? I think its commercialisation as in how much money can you make from it. Industry is still driven by vendors isn't it? Mature commercial virtualisation has massive overheads. A couple of examples is that it does not handle resources effectively as what essentially happens is that you are running one operating system on top on another. To get things into perspective of system performance, you...

Natively, this is not possible, but I did it anyway to get around a faulty disk with bad sectors on a notebook. Step 1 I used knoppix live distribution to boot the machine since the whole previous OS was corrupted by the disk anyway. Step 2 Next, I started the guessing game on how much of the disk I didn't want. Ok, its not that graceful, but i didn't want to spend like 2 hours scanning to look for bad sectors. Although one of the things I would do is to try to find them later. I spilt the disk to 2 x 20 Gb partitions and left some out of that for swap of the 2nd partition. fdisk /dev/hda (d)elete (n)new partition (p)rimary partition (n)new partition (p)rimary partition (w)rite partition and exit *optional as this gets blown away in disk druid anyway. Just leave some room for swap. Traditionally, its 2 x RAM available. (n)new partition (p)rimary partition After exiting the fdisk tool. You have created partitions, but not formated them. I wanted a journalised file system so i fo...

Thats my band. These guys are people I work with in the office even :) The missing drummer and tired basist.

All i can say here is that we used to be over on where the lights were. Would you prefer looking out at the lights or being right smack in them? I'd prefer the latter.

This post is a tribute to all you singaporean linux geeks out there. You will definately have strong feeling about this post, either good or bad. Blog search "linux singapore" and you might come in contact with this article http://fossplanet.osdir.com/Article6702.phtml which links to http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1512589723;fp;2;fpid;1 dated 03/08/2005 15:11:17 Ok, so this is is real recent right? Beat this comment. "The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) Technology Group has positioned Linux as a medium term technology bet, which means one to three years to mass adoption." Read on for more marketing. For those new to linux this might actually mean something good to you, but for those who already know linux and the culture that developed it. Its basically putting it into a box and sticking a label on it. Well looking on the bright side, to some extent there is some focus on it now, although it doesn't sound right how its being brought ...

"Harness your true potential!" Like one of those talks people pay tons of money to hear. In fact this line is so good, that I'd have to say it again "Harness your true potential!" Now that we are in the mood to roll up our sleves and put all our little machines to good use. fine print (please check with your partner if there are any areas you can use as there may be an obscene amount of equipment that will emerge after our excercise) Like all good excercises, start planning. Here's a guideline. 1) inventorise your machines, give them names, they will thank you for it. 2) Identify what software or services you will need to run and on what operating system. 3) roughly decide which machine is going to be for what. 4) choose your flavour of operating system. all kinds of different distributions and versions of linux or windows and possibly mac os. Inventorise In my case, i've got 1 x portable (ibook), 1 x linux server, 1 x workstation/gaming machine. Just th...

Face it, re-installations are a pain. However, its always a chance to put the best of plans into place and then find out how your plans ended up in the mess. Well, all wasn't lost so far. The original plan was to software raid 1 (2x 120GB disks) the installation. Of course, greed took the better of me and i decided, i'd just use one whole disk as a separate data mount and if i need to backup, cron an rsync between disks. at least I'd have a bit more room to play with. But like that is ever going to happen. Data issues, sigh. Unknown to most people, they normally have at least a terabyte of drive space lying around the house. Think about it. How many computers do you have. How many external firewire, usb drives do you have. Have you recently upgraded and have a couple of disks lying somewhere. And we haven't even started looking at optical media yet. Sometimes, I feel like just getting a NAS with at least a terabyte and not having to worry about it for a year, and I sti...

welcome to machine

Step 1: Beats and Pieces Step 2: Bring it to the machine Step 3: Centralised Repositories Step 4: FX or not to FX Step 5: Listen Step 6: Mastery leads to Perfection

Who doesn't like beastie boys?